The Interdependence and Indivisibility of Human Rights

The Interdependence and Indivisibility of Human Rights

ABSTRACT: This paper defends the claim that the contemporary canon of human rights forms an indivisible and interdependent system of norms against both "Western" and "Asian" critics who have asserted exceptionalist or selectivist counterclaims. After providing a formal definition of human rights, I argue that the set of particular human rights that comprises the contemporary canon represents an ethical-legal paradigm which functions as an implicit theory of human oppression. On this view, human rights originate as normative responses to particular historical experiences of oppression. Since historically known experiences of oppression have resulted from practices that function as parts of systems of domination, normative responses to these practices have sought to disarm and dismantle such systems by depriving potential oppressors of the techniques which enable them to maintain their domination. Therefore, human rights norms form a systematic and interdependent whole because only as parts of a system can they function as effective means for combatting oppression and domination.

Representatives of the human rights movement claim that the contemporary canon of human rights forms a indivisible and interdependent system of norms so that it is improper for governments to pick and choose among human rights those which they will honor while interpreting other human rights as optional, dispensable, non-obligatory, or even as "unreal." But the notion of the indivisibility of human rights has come under attack in recent years by some Asian governments which have claimed that the contemporary canon of human rights represents "Western values" which are in many respects inconsistent with "Asian values." At the same time, some Western governments, in particular the United States of America, have failed to ratify several of the covenants dealing with economic, social, and cultural rights, claiming that the rights represented in these instruments are merely "aspirational."

The contemporary canon of human rights refers to the entire set of internationally recognized human rights declarations and conventions, beginning with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and including all of the subsequently drafted and enacted international human rights instruments, such as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, the Declaration on the Right to Development, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and several dozens of other international documents which identify and codify human rights norms. Given that each of these documents contain several dozen articles, many of which describe several, complex rights, all together there are probably well over one hundred things that can be identified as "human rights" based on the canon.